Writer Neil McLeod says the Labour party is fast becoming irrelevant to its members and voters
IT seemed too good to be true for long suffering socialists when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party.
Here was an unquestionably principled politician who, in an era of political blandness, wasn’t just another flavour of vanilla. Despite his age and length of service in parliament he proved hugely popular with young Labour voters and caused a surge in membership as he was such a breath of fresh air after years of soft-right centre-ground consensus.
He actually stood fully opposed to the Tories rather than, like Ed Miliband, slightly to their left, holding their Barbour jackets like a mildly rebellious manservant. Now, nine months later, it rather predictably looks like it was all too good to be true.
With the Tory government in meltdown, the Parliamentary Labour Party has decided now is the time to mount a coup with the rather insipid Angela Eagle as the challenger.
With the Tory government in meltdown and the country reeling from the Brexit vote, the economy in crisis and the very future of the UK in serious jeopardy, the Parliamentary Labour Party has decided now is the time to mount a coup with the rather insipid Angela Eagle as the challenger.
The timing, unless we are to subscribe to a remarkable degree of coincidence, seems to be directly connected to the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the Iraq war, at long last due to appear on 6 July.
The Sunday Times reported on 22 May that Tony Blair and his foreign secretary Jack Straw would be "savaged" in the report. Corbyn previously stated his intention to apologise to the country on behalf of the Labour party and, perhaps, even to support calls for Blair to be tried for war crimes. The current plot is, I would suggest, conveniently timed to prevent a Labour leader carrying out this public condemnation of a man now reviled by much of the country but still the poster boy for success in the 'blue labour' fraternity.
The coup has the hallmarks of being co-ordinated by a cabbal comprising Portland Communications and the Fabians group of centre-right labour members. The former is a company organised, fronted and controlled by a plethora of apparatchiks of Tony Blair (where Alastair Campbell is special advisor), and the latter is the society of which almost every shadow cabinet resignee belongs.
Tom Mauchline, a senior account manager at Portland Communications, was shown in recent footage quickly uploaded to the BBC news website at London Pride heckling Corbyn that Brexit was "all your fault". It appeared at first that he was an ordinary aggrieved Labour punter expressing views symptomatic of the wider membership.
The timing, unless we are to subscribe to a remarkable degree of coincidence, seems to be directly connected to the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the Iraq war, at long last due to appear on 6 July.
It was claimed in the New Statesman that Fabian Labour Whip Conor McGinn co-ordinated and choreographed the shadow cabinet resignations in waves.
This may all seem a bit too much of a conspiracy theory for some but it is not my intention to suggest that Corbyn deserves to be immune from criticism. He appears to have let his own personal reservations over Europe hamper his efforts as party leader to convincingly deliver the policy of remaining in the EU.
It’s not just the biased mainstream media that impedes him, his demeanour and presentational ability can prevent his message being delivered. Like a particularly ineffectual supply teacher who, despite having done the job for decades, still can’t deliver a lesson without looking at his notes and nervously looking up over his glasses every few seconds in the anticipation of a spitball flying from a ruler at the back of the room towards his best cord jacket, and the nagging worry that that uppity head boy Benn has done something unpleasant in his desk again.
Even this, though, isn’t entirely something Corbyn can be blamed for. He didn’t really seek the position of power, it was rather accidentally thrust on him. He clearly stood simply in an attempt to inject an alternative voice (showing how far to the right Labour has travelled that a traditional, socialist voice is alternative) but it actually became so popular in comparison to the bland Andy Burnham and borderline Tory Liz Kendall that it became a bandwagon that could not be stopped.
Plan B for Corbyn was that he would hand over to a younger, leftwing leader, maybe in 2018, ahead of a 2020 General Election. Now, of course, that plan lies in tatters due to the prospect of a much earlier election, but actually was never going to work due to the complete lack of any viable younger leftwing candidate.
Nothing has really changed in his parliamentary party since Corbyn was elected. Roughly the same number of MPs didn’t support him then. They’ve been waiting for any excuse to attack him since day one, so politically opposed are they.
Nothing has really changed in his parliamentary party since Corbyn was elected. Roughly the same number of MPs didn’t support him then. They’ve been waiting for any excuse to attack him since day one, so politically opposed are they.
Every member of the shadow cabinet who resigned abstained in the vote on the Welfare Reform Bill in 2015. Needless to say, Corbyn voted against it. So those who fail to stand against the most regressive attacks on the poorest want to oust a guy who did stand against it because they say that they need a viable opposition to the Tories. That’s the great warped logic of the Labour cabinet.
They still fail to understand that the EU vote was lost not because of Corbyn failing to communicate Labour’s message, but because people across the country are fed up with a lack of well-paid, fulfilling jobs and affordable housing in a rich country where their lives contrast markedly with the prosperous bankers and tax evaders in boardrooms.
Immigration takes the blame, chief as ever among the scapegoats, but in reality it is the impact of unbridled free-trade capitalism, with which the EU was judged to be complicit, which created disaffection.
The shadow cabinet could have put their energy into painting a truly alternative vision alongside their democratically elected leader, rather than pursuing their inward-looking, London-centric coup, which is of little or no interest to the people who voted for Brexit.
Ironically, the Labour hierarchy is further illustrating by its actions how remote and disconnected it is, thus simply further alienating the very people it seeks to attract.
The disaffected working class in traditional Labour heartlands who moved in Scotland en masse to the SNP and in England in significant numbers to Ukip will not be won back by an attempt to venture back into the same thorny New Labour rose garden that lost them in the first place.
They don’t want a Labour party whose only alternative to the iron fist of Tory austerity is to offer austerity cushioned with a velvet glove. From a Scottish perspective, the Labour party already feels like an irrelevance with its solitary MP and rump of MSPs.
They still fail to understand that the EU vote was lost not because of Corbyn failing to communicate Labour’s message, but because people across the country are fed up with a lack of well-paid, fulfilling jobs and affordable housing in a rich country.
Even those potential voters who would be inclined to support someone as genuine as Corbyn see nothing in Kezia Dugdale’s party that links them. The vacuum is illustrated by the YouGov poll that showed a runaway lead for a popular candidate to replace Corbyn: 'Don’t know' at a whopping 57 per cent, a full 44 per cent ahead of Hilary Benn as the leading contender at 13 per cent, only just ahead of 'someone else' at 11 per cent.
In Scotland, 'don’t know' was at 59 per cent and 'someone else' second on 13 per cent. Angela Eagle polled at one per cent overall and zero per cent in Scotland. This isn’t satire, this is an actual poll. Blairite politics, and indeed the cosy middle ground consensus personified.
If Corbyn stands again, as seems entirely likely, it also seems likely he’ll win again. If he is prevented from standing that would also have major repercussions for the Labour party. We’re living in an era where all sorts of things we thought were constants seem to be ending.
The Labour party may well be one of them. The absolute chasm between the grassroots members and the parliamentary party looks like one so immense that no bridge could be
constructed to link it.
Picture courtesy of Plashing Vole
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